1) During the early days of World War II, he predicted that Germany would easily defeat England.

2) In the early stages of the Cold War he advocated the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against the Russians – which would have started World War III and been a moral disaster.

3) He refused to recognize the reality of the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s and in fact argued for years afterwards that the Chinese and Russians were still closely allied, despite a mountain of evidence against this fact. This error was rooted in his fundamental belief that communists leaders were ideologues first and nationalists second, which was a misreading of reality.

4) He vastly over-estimated the power of the Soviet Union and China, arguing that the West was doomed in the 1960s when in fact the United States already enjoyed a huge economic advantage over communism.

5) He was a huge fan of dictators all over the world, in places as far a field as Iran, Spain, Greece, Indonesia and Chile. The policy he advocated led to the US supporting murderous regimes and losing the respect of freedom loving people all over the world. A large part of the current tide of global anti-Americanism can be traced back to the policies Burnham supported.

6) He pined after European imperialism long after it had lost any logic or rational. He thought that people in Asia and Africa were incapable of governing themselves, and ignored the crimes against humanity committed by colonial regimes like South Africa, Rhodesia and French Algeria.

7) He advocated the use of biological and chemical weapons in Viet Nam, the sort of thing that gives Saddam Hussein a bad name.

In summary, I think Burnham was one of the most repellent figures in American intellectual history, and should best be regarded as a case study of how not to think about the world.